In the vehicle interior, motor vehicles have a multiplicity of surfaces which because of their high surface temperature greatly heat up the vehicle interior when the vehicle is exposed to insolation over an extended period of time. Said surfaces therefore have to be initially at least surface-cooled by an air conditioning system of a motor vehicle in order to establish ambient conditions that are acceptable to the occupants of the motor vehicle. Desirable for this reason is a technology which brings about a rapid cooling of the surfaces of the vehicle interior even in the first seconds following the start-up of the air conditioning system.
In conventional motor vehicles, the cooling of the interior is exclusively accomplished by means of evaporation cooling by transferring cold to air flowing into the interior. Warm surfaces, which radiate into the interior, are thus only gradually cooled through convective transfer of heat to the flowing air.
Devices with shorter cooling time merely exist for surfaces in direct contact with the occupants: accordingly, an active seat cooling is known from the prior art for vehicles of the luxury class, in the case of which air flowing into the seat is actively cooled via Peltier element and flows out towards the occupant via pore-like apertures above the seat surface. Such a Peltier element comprises p and n-doped semiconductors, which are arranged alternately and electrically in series with each other. Electrically conductive contact bridges between the doped regions serve as heat absorption or heat emission element. In order to thermally and spatially separate a hot side from a cold side, these are alternately attached to a top or a bottom side of the Peltier element.
DE 195 03 291 C2 discloses a heating-cooling mat for a vehicle seat. The same comprises an air conditioning mat in which multiple Peltier elements are arranged, which for the voltage supply can be connected to an electrical system of a motor vehicle.
DE 10 2012 018 387 A1 deals with a thermoelectric generator having a thermoelectric substrate and a multiplicity of thermal pairs, wherein each thermal pair comprises a first thermoelectric conductor of a first thermoelectrically active material and a second thermoelectric conductor of a second thermoelectrically active material.
DE 10 2013 110 254 A1 deals with a thermoelectric element which comprises electrically conductive threads, thread bundles or filaments. These are designed in the form of conductive strands passing through a substrate.
EP 1 340 060 B1 deals with a method for producing thermoelectric converters with multiple thermoelectric elements arranged in series. By interweaving electrically conductive wires of two different materials, which are alternately arranged in parallel, these are formed with wires of electrically insulating material.
Disadvantageous in using conventional Peltier elements for actively cooling a vehicle interior is that the same are not suitable for cooling large-area surfaces.